D&D 5E Solving the 5MWD

[Tony Vargas]

You could try would be variable recovery rates but that seems like a much worse solution than the one I'm suggesting. It ties resting to fictional events and then fails to make those events consistent. UGH! That's worse IMO than tying recovery to no in fiction event at all.

That's actually my preference. Some situations - say you're raiding an enemy stronghold and you're highly motivated to secure some key objective - a short rest might be just catching your breath between encounters, and a long rest is out of the question. Others - long sea voyage, since I've used it a lot - short rest is anything from an hour to a few days, it doesn't matter because encounters are days if not weeks apart, but age-of-sail voyages are a hardship, even the best supplied ship gets you some malnutrition going, for just one instance, so long rests are restricted to putting into port of foraging on a pleasant island with fresh water. All sorts of room in-between for scenarios with very different pacing, and different criteria for 'rest' that make sense in their context.

But whether that's fiction-driven or rationalization-of-mechanics-driven, you're still stuck with the need to get a certain net pacing of encounters (or other stress on resources) between rests, because of the game's design.

 

[FrogReaver]

Can't disagree, and 13A /does/ let the DM vary it a bit, if he wants, and the players to rest early for a 'campaign loss' or something like that. So it's not completely inflexible. But, 13A set out to be that love-letter to D&D, and that meant D&D-style class 'balance,' which meant doing /something/ to enforce pacing.

Oddly enough, two encounters /do/ burn resources differently than one encounter that's twice as hard (… though, hey, that's not necessarily twice the xp… hmmm). For instance, if you're a raging barbarian, or you're over-fond of a certain all-encounter concentration spell, you only use it once for the twice-as-hard encounter, but that's two uses if you want to use it in both the half-as-hard encounters... which might be below the threshold, so you don't use it at all.

...just thinking out loud, not sure there was even a point there.

Well your point is that XP shouldn't be a linear function of the number of each kind of monster you face - more of a cohesive whole. I agree with that sentiment. I just don't know how to model it in a simple enough way to arrive at RPG rules around it.

 

[FrogReaver]

That's actually my preference. Some situations - say you're raiding an enemy stronghold and you're highly motivated to secure some key objective - a short rest might be just catching your breath between encounters, and a long rest is out of the question. Others - long sea voyage, since I've used it a lot - short rest is anything from an hour to a few days, it doesn't matter because encounters are days if not weeks apart, but age-of-sail voyages are a hardship, even the best supplied ship gets you some malnutrition going, for just one instance, so long rests are restricted to putting into port of foraging on a pleasant island with fresh water. All sorts of room in-between for scenarios with very different pacing, and different criteria for 'rest' that make sense in their context.

That sounds more like variable per campaign. I'm talking variable intra-campaign.

But whether that's fiction-driven or rationalization-of-mechanics-driven, you're still stuck with the need to get a certain net pacing of encounters (or other stress on resources) between rests, because of the game's design.

Only if you are talking variable per campaign. Variable intra-campaign doesn't get stuck with that problem. It just has it's own other set of issues

 

[Tony Vargas]

This is 100% true. 5MWD is what I'll continue to call it but it's not really the root of the problem. The problem stems from player advocacy for their characters and then giving the players/characters direct in fiction control of their ability recharge rate.

Does it? Because, to me, that just sounds like "supporting" a play style - CaW, for instance, or Gygaxian "Skilled Play," or tactical wargaming vs scenarios.
You give the players resources, decisions, and challenges, and they try to achieve victory conditions.

If it were a player on one side vs the DM, or two players one running the party, one the monsters with a judge officiating, it'd be fair enough. You'd have both sides making decisions that would affect pacing, balance resource expenditure vs tactical or strategic gain, etc.

But...

The at-will/rest recovery differences in classes then amplify that problem so that it's apparent for all to see

(Heh, clearly not /all/ to see! Any discussion like this draws deniers.)

- due to the balance issues it causes.

So you're seeing the balance issues as the symptom?
OK, I see the balance issues as the cause - OK, the class designs as the root cause.

Because, D&D is not just a wargame with a player controlling a variety of troops & resources, both of which he expends as effectively as possible to achieve victory. It's an RPG, in which each player controls a single character who brings abilities & resources to the team, who, together, try to "win" a cooperative game - while (and at the same time) expressing/experiencing those characters, for its own sake.

The only things that really solves the root problem of the 5MWD is removing player/character direct in fiction control of their ability recharge rate.

That's still only a partial solution, because then you have a restricted pacing.

That's one place the 13A mechanic can fail - is in sandbox play and the nature of what constitutes an encounter (though an arbitrary xp minimum could always be put on an encounter in order for it to count as a resource recharging encounter). Of course this drives a separate kind of play style I'm not particularly fond of - even with the xp minimum requirement. It makes it so that expending resources on anything that won't directly win the encounter is a bad strategy. It forces you more into direct combat.

13A 'encounters' aren't only combat. But it does drive you to seek out challenge.

Whereas an XP based solution can incentivize you for finding ways around direct combat situations - even if doing so costs resources.

Or, vice-versa, to seek them out to put you over the top and that next level.

 

[Tony Vargas]

That sounds more like variable per campaign. I'm talking variable intra-campaign.

No, you could totally take a long sea voyage as a large part of a campaign, and, say, in the midst of that, raid a hated pirate stronghold.
That's the problem with "just throw the gritty switch!" - within a campaign, you may want very different pacing at different times.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Well your point is that XP shouldn't be a linear function of the number of each kind of monster you face - more of a cohesive whole. I agree with that sentiment. I just don't know how to model it in a simple enough way to arrive at RPG rules around it.

5e's may not be so bad at that - it's encounter guidelines are complicated, but IIRC, they do give you two different XP numbers - an equivalent exp for determining challenge (easy-deadly), an actual xp awarded (at least, I've been using them that way - but I've unconsciously house-ruled before).

 

[FrogReaver]

No, you could totally take a long sea voyage as a large part of a campaign, and, say, in the midst of that, raid a hated pirate stronghold.
That's the problem with "just throw the gritty switch!" - within a campaign, you may want very different pacing at different times.

That's what I'm referring to. Different pacing at different times in the same campaign. That's what I was discussing. That's what I coined the term variable intra-campaign for.

 

[FrogReaver]

Does it? Because, to me, that just sounds like "supporting" a play style - CaW, for instance, or Gygaxian "Skilled Play," or tactical wargaming vs scenarios.
You give the players resources, decisions, and challenges, and they try to achieve victory conditions.

What playstyle isn't supported by removing player initiated recharge of abilities?

(Heh, clearly not /all/ to see! Any discussion like this draws deniers.) So you're seeing the balance issues as the symptom?
OK, I see the balance issues as the cause - OK, the class designs as the root cause.

Consider 4e. There were no encounters per rest necessity. Theoretically the whole party could rest after every encounter and trivialize the next by using all their daily powers up front in it.

We always talk as if 4e solved the 5MWD - but all it did was allow all classes to benefit from it to nearly the same degree. To really prevent 5MWD from occurring player control of rests still needed to be removed (either by DM intervention - or player volunteers).

Because, D&D is not just a wargame with a player controlling a variety of troops & resources, both of which he expends as effectively as possible to achieve victory. It's an RPG, in which each player controls a single character who brings abilities & resources to the team, who, together, try to "win" a cooperative game - while (and at the same time) expressing/experiencing those characters, for its own sake.

Which to me goes back to taking away player controlled pacing.

That's still only a partial solution, because then you have a restricted pacing.

Once pacing is out of the players hands you've solved the 5MWD (or at least put the tools need to solve it in the DM's hands). There's other issues though depending on exact recovery implementation at that point.

13A 'encounters' aren't only combat. But it does drive you to seek out challenge. Or, vice-versa, to seek them out to put you over the top and that next level.

Sure. I don't know that it's possible to remove all player control in all ways over recovery. Just that you can limit it to such an extreme that the little bit of control they have isn't impactful enough to shape the whole campaign.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What playstyle isn't supported by removing player initiated recharge of abilities?

"Combat as War," big-time.
Gygaxian Skilled Play.
Attrition-based de-facto-wargaming scenarios.
...um...er..caster supremacy? "Really D&D?"

Consider 4e. There were no encounters per rest necessity. Theoretically the whole party could rest after every encounter and trivialize the next by using all their daily powers up front in it.

Yep. You could run scenarios in the above styles, facing far more dangerous combats than normally expected and succeeding, or trivializing standard encounters in the name of CaW. You could vary pacing fairly wildly over the campaign, and class balance wouldn't suffer.

We always talk as if 4e solved the 5MWD - but all it did was allow all classes to benefit from it to nearly the same degree

Yep, it didn't eliminate the phenomenon, just the need to avoid the phenomenon.

To really prevent 5MWD from occurring player control of rests still needed to be removed (either by DM intervention - or player volunteers).

Saint-like player restraint and/or ruthless GM force can make the most effdup game work like a charm.

Sure. I don't know that it's possible to remove all player control in all ways over recovery.

Its going to be there, be it in-game, metagame, system mastery or gaming the DM.
That's why it's better have a balanced system that's robust to it, to begin with.
But, that wouldn't be D&D.

 

[TiwazTyrsfist]

I feel like that doesn't capture my goals. I am looking to be able to offer play that is not all-alpha-all-the-time. So I want diversity. I'd like to be able to sometimes offer conserve-your-power-carefully play.

So it is about diversity in play, not punishing players.

I mean, I don't think it's MEANT to be punishing the players, but IMO it is, in that THEY want to play one way, and YOU the DM want to play a different way, and you are forcing your desired game style onto the others?

Like, if this is a common problem in your group you may need a different group?

I Freaking LOVE Agricola. I love fiddly micromanaging, I love complex scoring systems, I love digging deep for synergy between my options. But nobody else in my gaming group WANTS to play a 4-6 hour boardgame about Medieval Farming in France with Logarithmic Scoring.

Generally, they want to play Cards Against Humanity.

Now, CLEARLY, Agricola is a Deeper, Better, More PROFOUND game. So clearly they are wrong. I should force them to play Agricola. I will tell them we are playing Card Against Humanity, then set up Agricola and pass out Occupation and Minor Improvement cards.

This, SURELY, is a plan that won't backfire, or alienate my friends.


Cause, I've played plenty of D&D at cons where we didn't have a 5mwd. We kept rolling through 4,5,6 encounters without even a short rest. And as long as the players are OK with that, as long as we all agreed we were fine playing that way and knew that was the style of game we were going to play, it was fine.

So if the players are PLAYING All guns blazing, full rest between each encounter, it's because that's what they want? That's what they came to play?

Anyway.